Policy Shift Seen in U.S. Decision on Iran Talks

PARIS — The Bush administration’s decision to send a senior American official to participate in international talks with Iran this weekend reflects a double policy shift in the struggle to resolve the impasse over the country’s nuclear program.

First, the Bush administration has decided to abandon its longstanding position that it would meet face to face with Iran only after the country suspended its uranium enrichment, as demanded by the United Nations Security Council.

Second, an American partner at the table injects new importance to the negotiating track of the six global powers confronting Iran — France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and the United States — even though their official stance is that no substantive talks can begin until uranium enrichment stops.

The increased engagement raised questions of whether the Bush administration would alter its stance toward Iran as radically as it did with North Korea, risking a fresh schism with conservatives who have accused the White House of granting concessions to so-called rogue states without extracting enough in return.

The presence of William J. Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, at the meeting with Saeed Jalili, Iran’s nuclear negotiator, in Geneva on Saturday, will send “a strong signal to the Iranian government that the United States is committed to diplomacy,” the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, told reporters on Wednesday. Mr. McCormack insisted that there had been no change in policy.

All of the Bush administration’s diplomatic partners, as well as Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief and the leader of the talks, have been pressing Washington for some time to join in. They argue that the Iranians will take any proposal seriously only if the United States is a full partner.

European officials hailed the decision as an important shift signaling that with just six months left, the Bush administration is seeking to avoid a war with Iran.

“We are very pleased by the administration’s decision,” said Cristina Gallach, Mr. Solana’s spokeswoman, in a telephone interview. “It is a clear signal to the Iranians of the engagement of the United States and its commitment to a negotiated solution. At the same time, it is a clear message to the Iranians of the seriousness of this exercise.”

A senior European official directly involved in the diplomacy also welcomed the decision to send Mr. Burns, the State Department’s third-ranking official, calling it a “major change” in American policy.

Dana M. Perino, the White House press secretary, said it was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who had approached the president about sending Mr. Burns. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Ms. Rice had decided to test Iran’s willingness to consider an international package of incentives meant to coax Iran into making concessions on its nuclear program.

The combination of diplomacy and increasing sanctions, including those by the European Union against Iran’s largest bank last month, had produced some signals within Iran that it might being softening its stance, and Ms. Rice “decided it was a chance to press the advantage,” the official said. Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior aides discussed the idea as well, said the official, who was not identified because he was speaking about internal discussions.

The extent of American involvement remains unclear. Mr. McCormack described Mr. Burns’s participation in the talks as “a one-time-only deal.” Ms. Perino would not rule out additional meetings with the Iranians, saying it depended on the outcome of the meeting.

Some administration officials have even discussed whether to post American officials in Iran without established diplomatic relations, as in Cuba, but have said a decision has not yet been made.

The presence of an American at the talks this weekend may help quiet the mounting calls in both the United States and Israel for military strikes against Iran because of its recent expansion of its uranium enrichment program and its unwillingness to fully explain its suspicious past nuclear activities.

In Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said Wednesday that his country had “clearly defined red lines” that had to be respected in negotiations, a reference to Iran’s insistence that it has the right to peaceful nuclear energy.

But “if the negotiating parties enter negotiations with respect toward the Iranian nation” and “with the observance of these red lines, the officials of our country will negotiate,” the ayatollah said in a speech quoted by state radio, Reuters reported.

Ms. Perino said that if Iran’s government rejected the incentive package, the United States would seek further sanctions against the country’s leaders and state-owned companies, and encourage others to do so.

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Still, the decision to attend the talks came under attack from some conservatives, who criticized the White House for not standing by its policy of refusing to negotiate until Iran suspended its uranium enrichment.

“Just when you think the administration is out of U-turns, they make another one,” said John R. Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations, who was highly critical of the administration’s decision to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism last month. “This is further evidence of the administration’s complete intellectual collapse.”

From the opposite side of the spectrum, Senator John Kerry, Mr. Bush’s Democratic opponent in 2004, said the decision could be “the most welcome flip-flop in recent diplomatic history.”

American and Iranian midlevel envoys, including the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, have met episodically in several face-to-face talks in Baghdad in an effort to discuss common concerns over Iraq.

But there have been very few other direct encounters between American and Iranian officials since relations between the countries were severed after Iran seized the American Embassy in late 1979.

During the hostage crisis, President Carter once secretly sent Hamilton Jordan, his chief of staff, dressed in disguise as a potential negotiator.

In 1986, in an effort to free several American hostages in Lebanon, President Reagan sent his national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, on a secret arms-for-hostages mission to Iran. He went bearing a key-shaped chocolate cake and a Bible that Mr. Reagan had inscribed with a New Testament passage.

The first President Bush was so eager to begin a dialogue with Iran that he once answered a phone call expecting to find Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, then the president, on the line. The call was a hoax.

There were also unannounced midlevel contacts involving American and Iranian officials on the sidelines of six-country talks on Afghanistan in Geneva several years ago.

A determining factor in the American decision to attend the meeting this weekend appeared to have been Iran’s reaction to the fact that Ms. Rice signed a letter that was part of the package of political and economic incentives presented by the six powers in Tehran last month.

Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, was described by participants in the meeting as being visibly stunned by her signature on the document along with those of her counterparts.

Mr. Mottaki formally responded to the proposal in a letter this month, addressing it to Ms. Rice as well as Mr. Solana and the five foreign ministers of the five other countries. The gesture to include Ms. Rice was seen as a sign of Iran’s willingness to engage directly with the United States.

The Iranian letter ignored the important issue of its uranium enrichment activities but said Iran sought to “find common ground through logical and constructive actions,” according to officials who read it.

Under the incentives proposal offered to Iran, the two sides would agree to a brief mutual “freeze for freeze” under which Iran would not increase its uranium enrichment activities and the six powers would not seek additional international sanctions.

For substantive negotiations to officially begin, Iran would first have to halt its production of enriched uranium, which, depending on the enrichment level, can be used to produce electricity or fuel bombs.

But some European officials engaged in the diplomacy conceded that negotiations had already started, and that Iran had successfully opened a negotiating process while continuing its nuclear activities.

A version of this news analysis appears in print on , on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Decision to Join International Talks on Iran Signals a Shift in U.S. Policy. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe